Sea Creatures (16 page)

This mermaid version of me, filtered through Charlie's generous lens, came as a great relief. I wished my mother could have seen it.

Beside the mermaid on the dock were several small objects. It took a moment for me to sort out what they were, not because they weren't accurately portrayed but because I was having trouble focusing. My heart had quickened and my vision had blurred, as if I were underwater. Finally, I recognized them: a shark, a conch, and a scuba diver. Frankie's toys. I heard Charlie's steps in the hallway and looked up to see my discovery register on his face. From beyond him came the sounds of Frankie arranging bowls on a tray for lunch, his little feet shuffling.

I said, “Is this me?”

“Of course,” Charlie said. He crossed his arms over his chest and cleared his throat.

“I love it.”

“Good, because they want more. I'm working on a whole slew of Georgia mermaids.”

“Really?”

“That one's just a sketch. Keep it. Call it a modeling fee.”

He lingered a moment, then turned away. I found a plastic sleeve and slipped the drawing into my bag. I stood at the window and took in the sea air. Next door, Charlie's neighbors—husband and wife, no sign of the daughter—were poised to jump together off their porch the way we'd jumped off Charlie's. Their arms waved joyfully all the way down.

 

I SENT OFF A PACKAGE
for baby Jennifer, kicky pants and matching cardigan and cream-colored loafers, and the following week when I checked Charlie's post office box, there was a letter with a Seattle postmark. In the car outside the post office, I held the envelope to the sunlight, and though I couldn't make out words, I could see that it was comprised of a few handwritten pages. When I handed the mail to Charlie, I saw him register the envelope, and though he didn't open it in my presence, it seemed to please him.

New mermaid drawings appeared. He didn't put them in boxes with the others. He left them on the standing desk—I pictured him there, one foot balanced on the other in that way he had, drawing me—and I sorted through them myself.

We didn't chitchat a great deal, Charlie and I. But once, while we were both in the office and Frankie was lying on his belly in the corner, working with his colored pencils, I found myself describing my failed business, all the way from how I'd started in the admissions office and worked my way up, to how my last client had told me, red fingernail stabbing the air in front of my face, that if her daughter didn't make it into her safety school, I would hear from their attorney. When I finished, Charlie was stifling a smile.

“What?” I said.

“Nothing.”

“What?”

“I just—well, you don't strike me as particularly—how do I put it? Authoritative.”

“I know,” I said.

“Don't pout. I'd hire you. But I can just picture these nervous parents and their mopey kids. Everyone expecting you to perform a miracle.”

“I didn't perform miracles. I wasn't trying to. I just wanted the kids to—concentrate, I guess. Show their best selves. I had this idea that if they would all just quit it with the oboe lessons and the volunteering on weekends, if they were sincere and knew what I knew about what colleges really want, even if they knew which colleges wouldn't want them in a million years—I thought I could help them get through it. I know it sounds naive.”

“Maybe a little.” He chuckled and shook his head. “I'm sorry. Desperate parents—you stood no chance.”

I'd never thought of it this way, as doomed to fail from the start, like when a little shop opens up and the minute you see how the window is arranged, you know it'll be gone in a month. I'd been retracing my steps, trying to figure out where exactly I'd gone wrong. This other way of thinking about it was worse in a way, but in a way it was a relief.

“Don't dwell,” he said, waving a hand.

This struck me as funny in itself. I laughed and he looked confused. I wiped my eyes. In front of me on the linoleum was a mess of sea animals, all seeming to swim together in the same brew. It struck me suddenly that it was possible, what Charlie had said—that it was no big deal that I'd wasted thousands of dollars and run a business into the ground. That I'd made foolish choices and had no one to blame but myself. Maybe all I'd needed after it happened was someone to tease me a bit, to take it all less seriously.

Once a week, we took the Zodiac to Soldier Key and roamed the beach. I forced Frankie into water wings—I'd bought them against the advice of his swim teacher—and both he and Charlie balked. “They reassure me,” I said firmly, and they shut up about it. Frankie played a game where he tiptoed through the shallow water wearing his mask, then dipped quickly under, to spy on the fish as they went about their lives. He was undeterred by a lack of goings-on, and every so often, when he did manage to catch sight of a fish darting past, he squealed audibly. The sound thrilled me.

Charlie and I watched him from the shade of the hammocks at the water's frothy edge. I said, “My mother would have adored him. I mean, she really would have
adored
him.” I felt the inadequacy of my own words.

Charlie cleared his throat. “I knew your mother a little.”

I looked at him, his silver-stubbled jaw and lined eyes.

He kept his gaze on Frankie. He said, “Once, after Jenny died, I came home to this terrible racket in my house. Inside, there was your mother sitting at my piano, playing—”

“ ‘A Mighty Fortress'?”

He nodded. “I must say—”

“She did not sing well.”

“No, she did not. But she was belting it out, I'll tell you. And Viv and another lady were sitting there with their glasses raised, singing along. I said hello and went into the kitchen. Sometimes women can be a little intimidating, I find.”

The image of Charlie shuffling in the doorway while my mother sang a rousing rendition of one of the three hymns she knew how to play, her fingers sliding around, missing every fifth or sixth note—it was easy to picture. “Probably best you got out of there,” I said.

“I met your father once or twice. He was never one for the social stuff. I remember thinking we were probably two of a kind.”

“Not really.”

“As husbands go . . .” he said, but then he didn't finish his sentence. He said, “She was around a lot, in those days, usually when I wasn't home. Vivian said they laughed a lot. People get uncomfortable—it's not their fault—but not your mother.”

“No, not her.”

I'm not sure I ever saw my mother uncomfortable. I would have liked to ask her about this, to see if maybe there was some trick to it. How could we have been so alike in so many ways, and so unalike in this one?

The other hymns she knew by heart were “We Are Marching in the Light of God” and “I Love to Tell the Story.” She could play a couple of others—“Amazing Grace” included—haltingly, with close peering at the sheet music. I had the urge to sit in that room, on the evening of Charlie's memory, and sing along. It was nothing I would have enjoyed while she was alive.

I said, “What happened after that?”

“What do you mean?”

“Did she stop coming over?”

He tossed a clump of seaweed into the shallows. “I doubt it. I don't know what happened next. I came here.”

People get uncomfortable, I thought.

Frankie had gone from trying to catch the fish in his sights to trying to catch them with his hands. He ran to and fro, knees high, splashing and lunging, laughing in his soundless way each time he came up empty.

Charlie pointed to my boy. “She would have thought he hung the moon. She would have thought he was—” He took a breath. “Magical.”

I sat quietly in the warm surf, letting this wash over me.

He said, “And you—she would've been damn proud.”

 

ON THE WAY HOME FROM
Soldier Key, Charlie throttled down, then killed the engine as we drifted over a shoal. Frankie and I looked at him for an explanation, and he said, “I have something to show you.”

“What?” I said.

What?
signed Frankie.

To Frankie, he said, “A while back I told your mom that I used to have a boat.” He stepped to port and searched the water. “There,” he said, pointing.

We peered into the clear, sunlit water. At first I didn't see much of anything, just sand spotted here and there with sea cucumber and urchins. But then we drifted, and into view came the white hull of a small boat, upended on the ocean floor.

“Your boat?” I said.

What happened?
signed Frankie.

“Sank,” said Charlie.

“How?” I said.

“My best guess? Hose clamp failed. It was late, getting dark.”

The stilt house was half a mile away, maybe more. “What did you do? Did you swim?”

“Sure,” he said. “But I hung around for a while first, to watch it go down.”

“And you just left it here.”

He shrugged. “Not much choice. All the maintenance, all the fuel—I was glad to be rid of it.”

Frankie signed and I laughed.

“What?” said Charlie, looking between us.

“He said you littered,” I said.

“Ha! Want to see more litter?”

Frankie nodded.

“You got it,” said Charlie. He started the engine and turned away from the capsized boat, then puttered east, staring hard into the water. He cut the engine and told me to throw the anchor. “You'll need your mask,” he said to me. “I'll take the boy down first.”

It was an oft-ignored boating rule, I knew, to never leave a vessel unattended when anchored. Climbing into the Zodiac was a breeze—there was a level surface on the engine at exactly the right height—but still I appreciated his prudence. He helped Frankie adjust his mask, then jumped in and told Frankie to swim to him. He held him loosely on the surface as they peered into the green depths. They swam a few yards from the boat, then Frankie kicked excitedly and raised his face, waving with both hands and squirming in Charlie's arms.

I don't know the word!
he signed.

“Let's surprise her,” said Charlie to Frankie.

They peered down again, and after a few minutes returned to the boat, and it was my turn. I swam to where they'd been, my face in the water. What emerged from the depths did so abruptly, as if a curtain had been drawn. The plane of its lid was unnaturally black, the curve of its case instantly recognizable. I could see, scattered in the sand, a few ivory keys, and when I'd come to the far side of it, the keyboard itself was revealed, broken and dipping. A yellow fish darted into a crack. The whole thing had settled deeply into the seafloor, splintered and flattened like a crushed can. It must have been dropped from a good height.

“Crazy, right?” said Charlie when I climbed aboard.

What's the word?
Frankie signed.

“Piano,” I said. “We'll look it up.”

“
Grand
piano,” Charlie said.

To Charlie I said, “Do you know how it got here?”

He shrugged. “I figure someone was sick of practicing.”

 

FRANKIE ASKED TO FISH EVERY
time we arrived at Stiltsville, usually right after depositing whatever toy Charlie handed over into one of his little pockets. Unless the bay was too choppy, Charlie took him on the Zodiac for an hour or so while I worked. Sometimes I went along. Once, we drove out to the flats east of the radio tower, a stone's throw from the continental shelf, where the waves rose and the water darkened. Charlie handed me his rod so he could dig in my bag for snacks, and while I was holding it, there came a tug that nearly pulled the thing from my grip. I braced myself against the gunwale and struggled for some time, gaining ground and losing it. Charlie and Frankie whooped, Charlie with his voice and Frankie with his arms. For several long minutes, I was possessed—it is the only word—by the fight. My heart beat forcefully. When finally I was able to wrestle the struggling fish from the water, we saw that it was not a bonefish or sea trout or sea bass or tarpon, all of which we were used to catching and throwing back or frying up for lunch—it was a young bull shark, thirty or so pounds. The black eyes were mad with what looked to me like fear.

“Let him go!” I shouted to Charlie.

He got behind me and helped reel. The shark struggled. By the time we had him in the boat, we were both sweating and Frankie had moved to the prow, as far as he could get without going over, his eyes wide. Without thinking, I placed both hands on the shark's flank to keep him still—his skin was rough as a cat's tongue, the richest color of gray I'd ever seen—and Charlie lodged one foot in his mouth and reached in. Charlie pulled away the hook and I wrestled the shark over the side and dropped it, and we watched as he spent one stunned second hanging there, then flashed away.

“Mercy,” said Charlie, breathing hard. To Frankie, he said, “Your mom's been holding out on us, kiddo.”

That afternoon while Frankie slept, Charlie sat in his armchair, sifting through mail and peering down at it through his bifocals. I was supposed to take selections for the new Abyss show over to Henry Gale the next day, but I was having trouble choosing. I'd narrowed the field to twenty-one pieces, and I needed only fifteen. Charlie had made it clear that he wasn't interested in this part of the process. He had never so much as seen his work framed on a wall.

“Seriously,” I said to him, facing the grid of drawings I'd laid out on the floor. “I can't decide. You have to help.”

He didn't look up. “Close your eyes and point.”

“I'm not going to do that.”

“You're overthinking,” he said. “As you tend to.”

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Here we go,” he said.

I waited.

“Yes,” he said.